A leak in the Birmingham Post revealed the Carol Mather initiative. On 30 August, Neave spent hours on the phone trying to pour cold water on the story. The results were predictable. ‘The Times had quite a reasonable account of their talk with me and my disclaimer that our “citizens police force” had anything to do with General Walker (Unison) and Colonel Stirling (GB75),’ he wrote. ‘However, other papers, especially the Daily Mirror, suggested fascist tendencies.’ Another member of the Mather group, Monday Club stalwart Harold Gurden, had fed the frenzy by ‘announcing his scheme for 10,000 plainclothes vigilantes’. Neave, however, had only envisaged ‘reform of the Special Constables to combat vandalism’.
This was not a hasty rewriting of events. Diary entries before the Mather row blew up make clear his lack of sympathy with the self-appointed saviours. ‘Much talk about a “military takeover” by General Walker and disgruntled servicemen who distrust politicians,’ he had written on 21 August. ‘I think and hope this will come to nothing. The Army should be under the control of Parliament. All this is a symptom of the hysterical state of our society and the break-up of the party system.’
Neave’s faith in parliament as guarantor of citizens’ rights and curb on executive power was strong. The low esteem in which politicians were held outside Westminster frightened and depressed him. That, along with the tendency of the left of the Labour Party to see themselves as the representatives of the unions rather than the general public, presented a real threat to democracy. Like most politicians, he had an ambivalent relationship with the media, using newspapers and broadcasters when he could to make his points and build his image, but despising what he saw as their frivolousness and irresponsibility, which encouraged the breakdown of respect for the democratic process and the erosion of trust. He deplored the airs that TV journalists were increasingly giving themselves. After watching an edition of the BBC TV Midweek current affairs programme on parliament that he had declined to appear in, he complained that ‘the programme would have been improved if Ludovic Kennedy had not interrupted the whole time.’ The following day he congratulated himself on his judgement: ‘The BBC are a ripe lot of bastards and anti-parliamentarian,’ he concluded. The media distorted and trivialised, stoking contempt. For that reason, he had been an early supporter of televising parliamentary debates and select committee hearings, regarding the diehards who opposed it as ‘stone-age men’.12
It is fortunate that Neave chose to resume his diaries in 1973 after a ten-year hiatus just as his life, and British history, was reaching a climacteric. Even for those who lived through them, the 1970s now have a planetary remoteness. Much of what passed now seems surreal and things we then took for granted appear outlandish and even shocking. The central political drama was the struggle by the Heath government to reach a working relationship with the trade unions, who imposed themselves economically, politically and psychologically on the nation in a way they can only dream of doing now.
By 1973, the Heath government had reversed the policy on which it had come to power three years before of setting wage levels through free collective bargaining. After the notorious ‘U-turn’ of 1972, it was now committed to a prices and incomes policy, backed by legislation, which sought to impose order on wage demands in return for slaying the dragon that menaced almost everyone’s life: inflation.
Heath sought to achieve stability by inviting the trade unions to participate in shaping government policy. Agreements would not be imposed: they would be discussed and negotiated in a mature manner which took account of the nation’s needs as well as the direct concerns of this or that union. The endless consultations that followed might have seemed democratic in form. Directed by Ted Heath, they often felt more like an army orders group in which the bright, efficient CO he had once been in wartime issued commands and expected them to be obeyed. As Labour leaders knew before and later, it did not really make any difference which party was in charge. The unions were not interested in helping to run the country. Their concern was with the wage packets of their members; the fate of the nation and the well-being of their fellow citizens was the business of others. The conflict between government and unions defined British politics for the next decade and beyond, and the realities and atmospherics of national life could only change after a peaceful revolution in policy and strategy. Airey Neave would play a vital part in creating the conditions to bring it about.
At the beginning of 1973, it was clear that Heath’s approach was not viable and that he and his government were facing endless trouble. For all the supposed enmity between them, there is no evidence in the diary that Heath’s difficulties gave Neave any pleasure. There was more that united them than set them apart. Like Neave, Heath had visited Germany before the war and witnessed the ‘evil emotion’ Nazism could generate. He had attended a Nuremberg rally in the summer of 1937, with a seat in the aisle where Hitler almost brushed his shoulder as he marched to the podium to begin his rant.13 In the war, they both served in the Royal Artillery, in anti-aircraft units. There were points where their paths must have crossed. Heath was in action at Nijmegen in September 1944, defending the bridge against air attack, when Neave was there with IS9. Heath’s unit stayed on in Germany after the war and he wangled a trip to the War Crimes Tribunal, where Neave’s reputation as a minor star of the proceedings must have reached his ears. After the war, they both continued in the Territorials. In parliament, Neave stayed dutifully within party parameters and gave no cause to attract Chief Whip Heath’s ire. Whether he voted for him in the leadership contest of 1965 we do not know. But to his party leader and prime minister, Airey gave more than token support, and, as the diaries attest, he often sympathised with his problems.
As 1973 progressed, there were plenty to contend with. The annual inflation rate rose to a peak of over 25 per cent in 1975. The trade unions were thus pitched into a permanent fight to maintain living standards by pursuing wage awards that at least matched price rises. Naturally, those representing strategic industries wielded the most clout – starting with the National Union of Mineworkers. They would play a crucial part in Heath’s decline and fall.
The miners had first challenged the government in the previous year when they went on strike for seven weeks in pursuit of a large pay rise that would restore them to their position in the top stratum of the industrial workers’ pay league. Every pit in Britain was closed. Flying pickets pressured other workers to strike in sympathy and tried to block the movement of stockpiled fuel to power stations and factories. The national grid flickered as the fuel supply dried up and Heath declared a state of emergency. After the mass picket of Saltley coke depot in Birmingham and the death of a striker at a power station near Scunthorpe, struck by a speeding lorry, the authorities faltered. The government retreated, conceding almost all the miners’ demands. The crisis subsided but it was not resolved, and as the winter of 1973–74 approached, another clash with the miners loomed.
Heath now had the whole union movement against him. In 1971, the government had pressed through the Industrial Relations Act, which sought to rationalise negotiations and make agreements subject to the law. To register as legitimate representatives, unions had to sign up to rules of conduct, particularly on the circumstances in which strikes could be called. The Act was vehemently opposed by the Trades Union Congress, and trying – unsuccessfully – to bring them into line drained much of Heath’s remaining energy. Neave supported the government strategy and sympathised with Heath’s travails. He gave praise on the rare occasions when the Prime Minister pulled off a reasonable TV performance and respected his capacity to remain outwardly ‘optimistic and buoyant’ against all the odds.14
He felt for Heath when media-confected distractions such as the Lambton affair blew up. In the spring of 1973, a hitherto obscure Tory peer, Lord Lambton, was outed for frequenting prostitutes. Lambton’s haughty manner and dark glasses – worn for medical reasons – made him the picture of upper-class decadence, which to some extent he was. So too did th
e revelation that he liked to smoke a joint post coitum. Lambton’s role as Under-Secretary of State for Defence provided a thin public-interest justification for the story, raising the prospect of a breach of security and a rerun of the Profumo affair. Lambton left public life, but before departure confronted the allegations head-on in a television interview with Robin Day, offering that ‘people sometimes like variety. I think it’s as simple as that.’15 A subsequent inquiry cleared him of any wrongdoing. Heath handled the rumpus well in the eyes of Neave, who regarded the scandal as a storm in a teacup. ‘Is one to be always a security risk if one fucks someone who is not one’s wife?’ he mused.16
What bothered Neave about Heath was not his policies so much as his personality. In this he was merely one of many, inside and outside politics. Heath’s grumpiness and glacial social manner have now become legendary. In the current age of faked bonhomie, his indifference to what people thought of him and refusal to follow the advice of early spin doctors seem almost noble. However, even in those times, even among the last generation of Britons equipped with stiff upper lips, his manner was offensive. He managed to alienate everyone, not least Tory ladies. ‘Diana said that the Conservative Women were angry because the PM did not come to their tea party,’ Neave wrote on 21 May 1973. A few days later, Diana reported that her friend Nancy, wife of Martin McLaren, who was PPS to the Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, had declared herself ‘very fed up with the PM. He never speaks to anyone.’ He noted a ‘very strong feeling among our backbenchers, especially the wives, that they count for nothing.’17 Like everyone, Neave spent time analysing the enigma that was Heath. One day someone seemed to have put their finger on it for him. A local constituency supporter remarked that Heath was ‘a kind man, without a heart’.18 As an epitaph for Ted, it was as good as any.
As time passed, it became clear that Heath’s awkwardness was not merely an unfortunate character trait. A growing number of Tories came to think that it was a central element in the endless crises. With his wooden delivery and deficit of charm, he would never rally the nation behind the tough policies on offer. In time he would be a huge electoral liability.
For Neave, the darkening political picture was matched by frequent glooms and lapses into depression. He was often ill with unserious but debilitating ailments that further undermined his morale. He was far more sensitive than his confident exterior suggested. He never seems to have developed the tough hide needed to cushion the push and shove of politics. His former secretary Veronica Beckett, with whom he kept in touch after she joined the Foreign Office, remembered that, even after he was elevated to Margaret Thatcher’s front bench as Northern Ireland spokesman, he was ‘very, very sensitive to criticism’. She remembered him telling her that after some rough press comment he had called the leader, seeking sympathy. ‘She apparently said, “Pull yourself together. If you want to be a politician, that’s what happens,” or words to that effect.’19 He harboured little vanities and felt snubs – real or perceived – keenly. On 1 June 1973, he recorded that he had once again failed to appear on the Queen’s birthday honours list. He had given up hope of getting a knighthood, which was his due as a long-serving Tory MP, while Heath was in charge.20 Nonetheless, he confessed he was ‘upset’.21
This small setback came at the time of one of his periodic resolutions to pack in politics. He had just lost someone dear to him, fellow MP Harry Legge-Bourke, who died the week before. ‘If I can be said to have any close friends, he was the oldest,’ he wrote. They had started at Eton together in 1929 and he was ‘one of the last gentlemen in the wretched House of Commons’. The memorial service in Ely Cathedral was the trigger for further despairing reflections. The hymns and panegyrics were ‘sad but rather fine, but I kept mourning my own failure and ineffectiveness.’22 Religion did not provide much solace. The rituals of the Church of England were part of his routine, and he regularly attended at the church in Ashbury, where he sometimes read the lesson. According to the children, though, he was a cultural rather than a spiritual Anglican, and God gets no mention in his writings, public or private.
Thoughts of retirement continued to seduce. He had embarked on another book – his account of Nuremberg – and again he clutched at the idea that he could abandon ‘the booby-trap world of politics’ and make a living from his pen.23 Diana, he recorded, ‘does not encourage me … she is anxious about our old age and the inadequacy of my pension arrangements.’24 Sensible Diana. Projects for thrillers and a biography of the explorer H. M. Stanley had foundered. The considerable literary success he had enjoyed came from mining his wartime experiences, and the seam was surely nearly exhausted. Interest in Colditz, though, was unabated. Unfortunately, it did not directly benefit him. Every Thursday night throughout the autumn of 1972, Britons were glued to their TV sets by an enthralling new series with a fine cast and powerful storylines. Colditz ran for fifteen episodes, and a second series followed in January 1974. Most of the characters were invented, a few clearly identifiable and others an amalgam of several real inmates. None of them was based on Airey Neave, nor did his famous escape feature.
The technical adviser was Pat Reid, who was the model for the escape officer ‘Captain Pat Grant’, and Reid’s escape via the Singen route to Switzerland was the climax of the first series. The huge publicity surrounding the show did bring some media attention Neave’s way, in the form of press features about the ‘real Colditz’, TV and radio appearances and the like. One evening in May 1973, he was the guest of Rupert Murdoch, then a fledgling press baron, at the Sun annual TV awards. At dinner he sat at a table with Nyree Dawn Porter of Forsyte Saga fame, Mr and Mrs Rolf Harris and the second Mrs Murdoch. He liked Alwen Harris, as he did Anna Murdoch – an ‘Australian Catholic with whom I discussed contraception.’ He was pleasantly surprised when Colditz won an award and he was called forward to accept it.25
This was gratifying, but it did not compensate for the irritation he felt at perceived inaccuracies in the series and at the fact that his own feat had been overlooked. In various interviews, he let some of his dissatisfaction show. He was quoted as saying the harsh conditions had been underplayed, so that the castle seemed more like a holiday camp, and the prisoners looked as if their hair had been styled by Vidal Sassoon (he denied saying the latter – the great hairdresser’s name was unknown to him). In private, he was sharp about the way history, as he saw it, had been tampered with. After a party at the Imperial War Museum in January 1974 to mark the start of the second series, he recorded with gratification that he ‘met many old friends who recognised that I was the pioneer escaper who led the way’.26 However, the programme presented ‘Pat Reid as someone who made a home run when he spent the rest of the war in Switzerland’. The Colditz escape was still his most cherished achievement. When, a few days later, a letter appeared in The Times expressing weariness with the second series, under the heading ‘Is There No Escape from Colditz?’, he remarked tetchily, ‘And so a great episode is now derided.’27
There were moments, though, when he recognised his good fortune and was properly thankful for it. ‘I never cease to feel how lucky I am in my home and my family,’ he wrote in March 1974.28 He loved the Old Vicarage. Diana had made it ‘a dream place’.29 Whatever emotional distance might have separated him from his children when they were young had faded. Marigold had left home first, married, become a mother and pursued a career path that he had limited interest in, and as a result he knew her ‘comparatively little’.30 He was proud of her intelligence, and the grandchildren gave him amusement and pleasure.
The boys were down at Ashbury most weekends, bringing friends and livening the place up. William’s high spirits and adventurous nature, which was combined with sound common sense, cheered up his father. Patrick was less flamboyant, but diligent and determined, and each step as he set off down the path of a career in international banking was approvingly noted. Above all, there was Diana. She never seems to have grown exasperated with his frequent depressions and dissati
sfactions with his lot. For, though he might count his blessings from time to time, the banked fire of ambition still glowed. ‘I would like to be “somebody”,’ he confessed in the summer of 1974. ‘It is, I fear, too late.’31 He was wrong. Though there was nothing at all to suggest it, his time was at long last approaching.
10
‘A Perfect Woman, Nobly Planned’
In the summer of 1973, the Neaves prepared to welcome a special visitor to the Old Vicarage. Airey had known Margaret Thatcher for almost twenty years. He had first met her when she arrived as a pupil at Frederick Lawton’s chambers in 1954.1 As aspiring politicians they came across each other at meetings of the Conservative Candidates’ Association. Margaret Roberts, as she then was, stood out for several reasons. She was a woman who wanted to be an MP, still a rare species in early 1950s Toryland. She was bright, and she was attractive. Not all of the dark-suited, mainly public-school men who crowded the ranks of hopefuls found her appealing. According to one aspirant, Edward du Cann,* she was ‘strikingly attractive, obviously intelligent, a goer’, and first on her feet at meetings to ask a question. However, ‘most of her fellow-candidates found this habit off-putting: they thought her too keen by far, too pushy.’2
Neave’s thoughts on first encountering the woman whose fate would become so entangled with his are not recorded. Their paths often crossed thereafter. She helped him with his old-age pensions campaign and for a while they were neighbours in Westminster Gardens. By the time she and Denis made their visit to Ashbury he was, unreservedly, a fan. Margaret Thatcher was now Secretary of State for Education and Science, appointed by Heath after his victory in June 1970. She was due to visit some schools in the constituency and Airey and Diana had invited the Thatchers to stay the night. For the Neaves, it was clearly a big event. Thatcher was the only cabinet minister with whom he had a personal connection. Planning began two months before. The couple wanted the stay to be relaxed. When a neighbour tried to lure them and their guests out to dinner on the night of their stay, Airey vetoed the invitation. He felt ‘Margaret should be given a rest.’3 Instead, they would dine at home, with Meredydd Saunders-Davis and Dr Walter Marshall, the witty Welshman who was director of Harwell, and his wife Ann.4
The Man Who Was Saturday Page 21